Daniel

::Daniel....as he looked when he first arrived here.  Since he was four years older than Blake, Mom thought he seemed so old by comparison.  Looking back, he was GARTH'S age!::

::Around the time that Daniel was thirteen, his parents decided to send him over to our farm once a week just to give him a different experience.  His dad is a graphic designer and here, well, we're farmers, of course.::

::After several years of once a week, he finished homeschooling and went to IT school.  He eventually ended up here on the farm every day for a couple years.::

:: Daniel, a man of many diverse skills, developed a fondness for washing dishes!!!:::

::...which may or may not have been due to the fact that Janel was visiting. Mom and Janel's mom met through a homeschooling group.  Though our families lived at the opposite ends of the state,our families eventually met. Over the next several years, Janel would come stay for a few days every once in a while. She and Daniel were about 14 and 16 and they seemed to get along quite well.::

::We kids always had a blast during the winter, riding our bikes around in the barn. Especially when Daniel joined us.::

::He read to us sometimes, but his biggest talent was telling us stories. He read a lot of books and then, while he was working, we kids would gather around him and he would tell us all about it. He was wonderful at remembering details and used different voices for different characters.::

::Here we are all listening to Daniel read a letter from Janel, written to one of the girls. Those letters were all greatly enjoyed.::

 ::When we had re-varnished and hadn't put the table and chairs back in the kitchen, Daniel joined us on the floor for some pizza.::

::Bringing milk in from the milk house was one of the jobs Daniel took upon himself before every meal.::

 ::Like I said, Daniel was always like a big brother to us...::

 ::He was always willing to try everything with us.::

 ::And pose for weird pictures. ::

 ::He made a great 'bad guy' in our little home videos that we made. Very convincing actor he was.::

 ::Whenever we went somewhere, we always did our best to convince Daniel to go along because he always helped make everything more interesting.::

 ::This is Daniel's REAL family. The ones who usually only saw him late at night and over the weekends. Despite that fact, they have always been great friends of ours.::

::This was during the time that Logan and Maria (I) milked cows, morning and evening. Daniel usually came and helped, and we had grand times. Logan and I became concerned that Daniel was getting on in years and wasn't married yet. (I think he was about 20.) So, we became his (unwanted) advisers. We hinted strongly that he might consider Janel.::

::The rest, as they say, is history::

::Hanging out at the State House::

::At Janel's sister's graduation party/Civil War Era Ball::

::Male bonding time while reflooring the barn::

::Spontaneous concert::

::And so Daniel decided to get married to Janel.::

 :: The Elwood side of the family::

::After Daniel left the farm and got married, he went to work for Alltel doing.....something important.  Something with the IT skills he learned.  Here he poses with Chad, the Alltel guy from the ads.::

::Daniel, Janel, and Natasha.  They just returned to the States after being gone for five months to Panama..::

Of Motherhood and Words

One time when I was eighteen, I was working for a family with four small children plus a brand new baby.  The mom needed a few things at the little store a few miles from their house, so I told her I would take the four little ones with me to the store so she could have a few quiet moments with the baby for a while.  

I walked into the little store with my four little charges, all of whom were under six.  As I was selecting the few items that I needed I became aware that  the store workers were talking about me across the store.  In hushed tones, I got the jist of what they were saying, "Isn't she to be pitied to be so young and have so many children?"

I was having a good laugh within myself that their sympathies for my apparent overwhelm in life were unwarranted.

I had a really hard time remaining somber at what happened as we approached the counter to pay for our things.  I had the little curly headed blonde boy  on my hip while the other three  little ones crowded up to the counter next to me.   One of the little girls was two.  Very sweetly she peered over the counter edge with eyes merrily twinkling and happily volunteers,  "We have a new baby at home!"

It was priceless.  I just smiled and walked out of there with "my" four little children to go home to the baby (and his mother).    I hadn't solicited their advice and I didn't really think it was my responsibility to set them straight on their obvious misinterpretation of the situation. 

I've passed too many erroneous judgments along the way to be too hard on those store workers.   They'll never know the impact they made on my life, though!  

Fast forward about ten years and I was standing at the counter of another store with four or five of my own little children.  I was wrestling through some comments I had heard someone make about mothers with many children.  The person had said that a mother with many children couldn't possibly really love them all.  I kept turning this over in my mind.  Really?  I thought.  Was this true?  I thought I loved all my children.  I know I get impatient with them and everything, but didn't I love them enough?  I battled that within myself for quite a while and was still thinking those thoughts when I approached the counter to put my things on to pay.

The strangest thing happened then and I will probably never forget it.  The lady at the cash register looked at the faces of my little children standing there and said, "My, they look loved!" 

Was that a weird thing to say or what??  Beyond a doubt, I knew God sent that message to me.  There is no other explanation for someone who I barely knew to---out of the blue---say something that odd at the very moment I was mulling over those very thoughts.

Words are funny like that.  You'll never know how what you say effects other people even years later.  Granted we all say dumb things that we shouldn't have said and probably hurt other people in doing so.  That's unfortunate.  I have a file in my mind of words that were spoken to me like that.  I try to forget about them as I hope others have done with my misspoken words.  Happily, however, I also have a treasure chest of kind words that have been spoken into my life.

Like the time we were babysitting the daughter of my mother's childhood friend.  Little Nikki was asking for a drink and I stood there offering her a choice between the green cup and the blue cup.  My mother walked into the kitchen at that moment.  She told me,  "You're going to make a good mother someday."

I don't know why I have always remembered that with such fondness, but I do. I was eleven years old at the time! It was such a happy thought that my mother anticipated that I was going to do a good job of something that I had always wanted to do.  It's like the words keep speaking to me, "Do a good job because your mom expected you would!"  Years later when I had my first little girl, I gave her the middle name Nicole partly because of that incident.  

When I was a little kindergartener, I remember being taken upstairs by my teacher to the second grade teachers for them to admire my sweater.  One of them said, " This is Jeff's sister and their mother made this beautiful sweater."  They all took turns admiring me in my sweater, twirling me around as they did so to take in the whole thing.  In all the world, no little girl ever had so many pretty sweaters, book bags,  mittens, and scarves as I had because my mother made them for me.  She made matching ones for my friends sometimes, too.  Even my teachers admired them!  Really, I have my old school pictures to prove it, my mother really was a very talented knitter, and I was so glad she was MY very own mommy.

"There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one." I am not sure who said that, but my mom is the embodiment of that quote.  I'm sure I never thanked her enough for all the hard work she put into being a mom---my mom.  Based on the collective recollections from my siblings and me, I think it was more of a challenging task than we realized!

Thanks, Mom!

~Colleen